Bak Muhyeon rubbed his seawater-soaked hand against his chest to wipe off the moisture. Perhaps because the seawater was only one or two degrees, Bak Muhyeon’s body, which had been submerged for some time, was trembling. With shaking hands, he took out the snake curled up inside an inner pocket of his bag.
The small snake climbed onto Bak Muhyeon’s wrist and coiled round and round his forearm and wrist. Staring at the snake, the color of a ripe banana, he looked around the cable car as the water rose, then placed the snake on top of his head. Then, holding a pad whose screen was cracked but still lit, he looked at the people around him, who made no sound at all.
The enormous snake that had my waist in its mouth remained there, as if it had been waiting for that little snake. Bak Muhyeon turned his head toward Sin Haeryang, then shook it as if he could not bring himself to do it.
He let out a sigh as though he meant to expel his lungs, and watched in terror as the water entering the cable car rose higher and higher past his shoulders.
I waited for the visitor who would come because of the blood leaking out of the three people inside the cable car. But no matter how long I waited, no great white shark came. Why wasn’t it coming? The water had risen enough to touch Bak Muhyeon’s chin, and yet there was no sign of the great white shark that should have been battering the cable car with its whole body.
“Is the creature offered as the price of the miracle a great white shark?”
“What manner of offering do you mean by offered?”
“It means killing one creature whose entire species could vanish at the final stage of the ritual without causing any great effect on the ecosystem.”
Suddenly, I remembered the conversation I had had with Elizabeth as she put the jewel on me. Then here... are there no great white sharks? Then what happens?
The water continued to surge into the cable car. When the crown of his head was nearly touching the ceiling, Bak Muhyeon leaned his head into a corner of the ceiling so the snake could move. The small snake writhed its body and crawled into a crack in the ceiling.
Bak Muhyeon watched it for a while by the light of the broken pad, then, when the seawater rose past his chin, he firmly shut his mouth. The light of the pad flickered and went out. By the time the water level reached his nose, the yellow snake clinging precariously to the ceiling fell into the seawater with a plop.
Just as I gasped in shock at the sight, the small yellow snake began swimming through a crack in the damaged cable car. As if the sea had been its home all along, it moved freely this way and that through the water, then in an instant approached the place where I and the enormous snake were waiting.
Then it swam in a circle around us once and leisurely disappeared into the dark seawater.
In my entire life, I had never seen a snake that could swim that well. Was that thing a sea snake? Are you one too? The enormous snake that had my waist in its mouth said nothing.
The snake waited quietly until the cable car was completely submerged and Bak Muhyeon floated in the water, then began to sink, before releasing the waist it had been biting. Then, in the blink of an eye, it swallowed the dead Bak Muhyeon whole from the head down, returned, and bit my waist again. Before I could even be horrified by what had just happened before my eyes, the snake began swimming again.
Was the snake hungry? Come to think of it, there was no end to the length of its body. I had no sense of how much a snake this size would have to eat to fill its stomach. If it was going to swallow Bak Muhyeon like that as food, why hadn’t it swallowed Baek Aeyeong or Sin Haeryang beside him? Why wasn’t it eating me?
The enormous snake rose vertically toward the sea’s surface, then wrapped its endless body around the Jujak-dong cargo elevator connected to the undersea base.
When the giant snake’s head slid into the elevator, all the lights inside went out at once and it stopped. The passengers, surrounded by darkness, screamed in terror. Familiar people were gathered inside the elevator. Among those whose faces were etched with exhaustion and fear, I saw Bak Muhyeon sitting there. Beside him were Gim Gayoung, Yu Geum, I Jihyeon, and Kevin. On the other side were Kanu, James, Sam, Logan, Carter, and Benjamin. In the corner, Emma was crouched with her head bowed. I could roughly tell when this was.
When the snake pulled its enormous head out of the elevator, the lights came back on and it rose. I watched as the elevator repeatedly stopped and started again, moving little by little from Jujak-dong toward Daehan Island.
There were times when the elevator stopped because it had developed a problem on its own, but those were very rare. The snake seemed to find it amusing that whenever it shoved its gigantic head into the elevator, the lights went out and screams rang out, and whenever it pulled its head out and the lights came on, cheers followed. Unable to keep watching this bizarre scene from beside it, I asked the snake not to do that, but it was no use. While biting me, the snake even pushed the elevator downward.
The elevator, which had been struggling upward, was pinned under the snake’s massive body and left hanging partway, only a few meters short of Daehan Island. I could see people grabbing hold of one another, dragging arms and legs up toward the surface for survival through a cooperation named discord. And I also saw Anna watching the sight, just like the snake and me.
Anna clapped as she looked at the people inside the elevator, but I turned my head away. The snake lingered for a moment, then went down to the place where the Jujak-dong cargo elevator had been rising from. Then it began waiting quietly down below.
After Emma ran outside carrying Bak Muhyeon’s backpack, the elevator plunged downward. When I Jihyeon broke the control panel inside the elevator and jumped up and down, the elevator, which had already been submerged in seawater for a long time and had been malfunctioning because of the snake, finally went completely out of order.
Bak Muhyeon, shot near the heart, lay on the floor and stared blankly into the air. Beside him, Anna was plummeting along with the elevator, frantically rubbing at her face and neck.
The snake spat out my waist, which it had been biting, and opened its mouth wide toward the descending elevator. Watching that from beside it, I felt like I was about to develop a snake-related phobia I’d never had before. I think I’m unconscious even now, but I feel like I’m about to faint even deeper.
When the emergency stop device halted the elevator’s fall, everything on top of and inside the elevator bounced slightly into the air, then dropped back down. There was nothing left intact. The enormous snake gulped down Bak Muhyeon, who had bounced upward, in midair, then, as if nothing had happened, bit my waist again. ...No matter how I looked at it, I seemed to be a packed lunch being saved for later.
The snake left the other corpses and injured people beside Bak Muhyeon alone. Then it swam toward its next target. It did not swim as far as I had expected. The place where the snake arrived was the coastal waters not far from Daehan Island.
The giant snake buried its head beneath the surface of the sea and waited quietly. Countless fish passed around me and the snake, but the snake paid no attention to the marine creatures passing through it, nor to the people floating on the sea’s surface with their escape pod capsules open.
Not long afterward, an escape craft approached, cutting through the blue seawater, and was struggling to get out above the surface while wildly tickling the enormous snake’s body. The snake passed through the escape craft, bit both my waist and Bak Muhyeon’s ankle, and lightly pulled downward.
When the escape craft opened its capsule not above the surface but underwater, Bak Muhyeon immediately began to suffocate. I tried to pull his arms and legs out of the water to save him, but they only passed through me. When Bak Muhyeon, who had been swimming while thrashing his limbs with all his strength, went limp, the snake opened its mouth and gulped him down. Then it bit my waist again and began swimming once more.
I started punching the snake biting my waist with all my might, but not only did my hand not hurt at all, the snake did not look hurt either. If I’d known it would be like this, I should have asked Sin Haeryang or Gang Sujeong to teach me how to throw a punch. I don’t know if I could knock down a snake the size of fifty buildings with my fists, but at least it might relieve a little of my anger. Why are you only eating me! Starve, you bastard!
In one corner of my mind, cold thoughts passed by in order: was becoming snake food really such a terrible thing? I wasn’t a living person, but a dead one, and if I were left alone, wouldn’t I become food for crustaceans like shrimp or crabs and for worms anyway? If a starving snake ate me, wasn’t that an environmentally beneficial way of disposing of a corpse? But thinking of my funeral and my family, I forced myself to ignore those thoughts.
The enormous snake squirmed as it swam, descending vertically toward the deep sea, and this time entered Baekho-dong of the Fourth Undersea Base. Then it abruptly thrust its head into my room in Baekho-dong.
There, Bak Muhyeon was sleeping quietly on the bed. The 7:17 alarm was blaring with an incredible noise, but he showed no sign of waking. Judging by the state he was in, he looked almost unconscious on top of the bed. It was like looking at the day after a massive drinking binge.
Because I knew about this situation, I waited for time to pass while being held in the snake’s mouth by the waist. But even after 7:25 had passed and the seawater had risen precariously onto the bed, Bak Muhyeon did not wake. The cold deep-sea water tickled his back, calves, and hair, then the water level rose until seawater began slipping little by little into his closed mouth and nose, and still he could not get up.
Ignoring the fact that the snake was biting my waist and everything else, I made every possible effort to wake myself, who was sleeping soundly in this emergency as the water rose. I tried to grab the phone, slapped my face with my palm, and kicked myself with all my strength to knock me off the bed. When none of my physical actions worked, I screamed into Bak Muhyeon’s ear. Wake up! I said wake up! How long are you going to sleep! Wake up! Wake up right now!
Bak Muhyeon’s body, sprawled asleep on the bed, floated up slightly because of the seawater. Watching this from a third-person perspective was driving me insane. Perhaps someone in Baekho-dong had triggered the emergency alarm, because warning broadcasts telling people to evacuate came from the ceiling speakers, and the door was forcibly opened.
The murmuring voices of people evacuating could be heard in the hallway. As the water that had been rising high in the hallway dispersed all at once into each room, a current rose like a wave and surged into my room.
Because of this, Bak Muhyeon’s face, which had been dangerously close to the seawater touching his nose and mouth, was completely submerged. But he still did not wake. Someone, anyone, please wake me up and take me with you. The evacuation alarm continued to sound, but no one came to Room 38.
The snake waited quietly for the submerged Bak Muhyeon, then spat me out of its mouth. Then it swallowed Bak Muhyeon, who was asleep underwater. And then it bit my waist again.